We'll have five full days of baseball fun at SABR 42 in Minnesota this summer, so we hope you'll join us for an experience you won't forget. All baseball fans are welcome to register for any of our events.

In addition to our lineup of great speakers (highlighted by Minnesota Twins president Dave St. Peter and general manager Terry Ryan, with keynote speaker John Thorn), panels and research presentations, we're also planning an exclusive tour of Target Field, with special access to areas of the ballpark not available to the public; a tour of the Minneapolis Public Library; a trip to the baseball exhibit at the new Minnesota African American Museum; a special screening of the new "Knuckleball!" film documentary; a Twin Cities historic ballparks site tour; a one-man play on Hall of Fame executive Branch Rickey; our renowned SABR Convention Trivia Contest; and much more.

Hotel: The Marriott City Center is at 30 South 7th Street, Minneapolis, MN 55402. It is located just blocks from Target Field, home of the Minnesota Twins. The hotel's website is www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/mspcc-minneapolis-marriott-city-center and phone number is (800) 266-9432. Please note that our block of rooms at the Marriott and at our overflow hotel, The Westin Minneapolis, are both sold out. If you still need a room, click here for a list of nearby hotels from the Minneapolis Convention and Visitors Bureau website.

Speakers: Minnesota Twins president Dave St. Peter and general manager Terry Ryan highlight our list of speakers and panelists at SABR 42. Keynote speaker: John Thorn, Official Historian, Major League Baseball. Check out our list of speakers here.

In case you missed the news last week, here's our keynote speaker for SABR 42 in Minneapolis:

John Thorn is the Official Historian of Major League Baseball. He was named to the post by Commissioner Bud Selig in March 2011, succeeding the late Jerome Holtzman. A longtime SABR member who was the recipient of the Society's highest honor, the Bob Davids Award, in 2006, Thorn is the author and editor of numerous books. His works include Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, published in 2011 by Simon & Schuster; Treasures of the Baseball Hall of Fame; the Total Baseball encyclopedia series; The Glory Days: New York Baseball 1947-1957; The Armchair Book of Baseball; and The Hidden Game of Baseball. He is the founding editor of McFarland's Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game and creator of SABR's The National Pastime. He has served as the senior creative consultant for Ken Burns' Baseball series and appears regularly as a television commentator on MLB Network, ESPN, PBS and The History Channel. He is a renowned expert on the early origins of baseball; in 2004, he revealed the existence of a Pittsfield, Massachusetts, statute prohibiting the play of baseball in 1791. He has written essays and articles for many publications, including The Sporting News, the New York Times, the Boston Globe,American Heritage and VOICES, the publication of the New York Folklore Society.

Awards presented or announced at the luncheon include the Lee Allen Award, the Roland Hemond Award, the SABR Baseball Research Awards, the McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Awards, and the Henry Chadwick Awards. The awards portion of the luncheon concludes with the awarding of the Bob Davids Award, SABR's highest honor.

The SABR 42 Awards Luncheon is scheduled for 12:30-2:30 p.m. on Friday, June 29 at the Marriott City Center in Minneapolis. Regster for the SABR convention online at the SABR Store. All baseball fans are welcome to register for the luncheon or any other event during our annual convention.

Join us at the Barnes & Noble on 8th Street for a SABR authors panel and book signing featuring: Mark Armour, Pitching, Defense, and Three-Run Homers: The 1970 Baltimore Orioles; Rob Fitts, Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan; Daniel R. Levitt, The Battle that Forged Modern Baseball: The Federal League Challenge and Its Legacy;John Thorn, Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game; Steve Treder, The Hardball Times. Moderator: Stew Thornley, editor of Minnesotans in Baseball.

Dave St. Peter has worked in the Minnesota Twins organization since 1990 and has been the team president since November 2002. He leads the team's strategic planning process and business departments. He was involved in the approval, design, and construction of Target Field, which opened in 2010 and was named the 2011 Sports Facility of the Year by Sports Business Journal/Sports Business Daily. A native of North Dakota, Dave serves on the board of the Minnesota Twins Community Fund, the Ronald McDonald House of the Twin Cities, and Meet Minneapolis.

Introduction by Brenda Himrich, president of the Halsey Hall Chapter. Brenda jumped on the baseball fan wagon when the Twins won the World Series in 1987 and hasn’t fallen off yet. Though a recent fan, she has memories of seeing Harmon Killebrew hit a grand slam and Kirby Puckett hit for the cycle. The significance of these events was lost on her until she joined SABR in the 1990s. The years of being a member has enhanced her appreciation of baseball by adding historical depth and knowledge. As president of Halsey Hall Chapter of SABR, Brenda is proud to welcome all to Minnesota and SABR 42.

Official Scorers Panel1:00-2:15 p.m., Thursday, June 28Ballroom 1-2

Our panel of official scorers for major league teams will discuss rules and scoring issues that come up during the course of a game, including appeals, reversed calls and other disputes. Speakers include:

Stew Thornley, who joined SABR in 1979 and got his first shot at official scoring as an add-on job while doing public-address announcing in the early 1980s. He became a Major League Baseball official scorer for Minnesota Twins home games in 2007 and has been doing datacasting for Twins home games for Total Sports/MLB.com since 1998. He has written many books about Minnesota sports history, and his first book, On to Nicollet: The Glory and Fame of the Minneapolis Millers, received the Macmillan-SABR Baseball Research Award in 1988. He is related by marriage to the SABR Halsey Hall Chapter president, Brenda Himrich.

David Vincent, a long-time member of SABR who received the organization's highest honor, the Bob Davids Award, in 1999. David is the founding secretary of Retrosheet, which collects play-by-play accounts of every game in major league history. He has served as an official scorer in four minor leagues (including 21 seasons in the Carolina League) and has been the official scorer for Major League Baseball since it returned to Washington, DC, in 2005. He is known around baseball as "The Sultan of Swat Stats" for his expertise in the history of the home run. He is the author of many books and articles on home runs and umpires.

Gregg Wong, a sportswriter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press from 1969 to 2002. Gregg was the official scorer for several Minnesota Twins game in 1988, and he and Stew Thornley took over as official scorers for the Twins when longtime scorer Tom Mee retired in 2007. A 1969 graduate of the University of Minnesota, Wong was the official scorer and public-address announcer for the Minnesota Gophers in 1968 and 1969, wrote for the school newspaper, and worked in the sports information office. Gregg's last year in newspapers was in 2002, and he concluded it by covering the playoff series between the Twins and Angels. That year he also covered the NCAA hockey championship, won by the Gophers, and all four majors in men's golf.

Moderator: Kevin Hennessey. Kevin is a lifelong baseball fan and a member of SABR's Halsey Hall Chapter since 1997. Kevin has served on the chapter's Board of Directors for seven of his 15 years, and has contributed presentations and articles to chapter meetings and publications on a regular basis. Kevin has served as an official scorer for the St. Paul Saints beginning in 2008 and for Twins games beginning in 2009. He continues to score baseball games for STATS, Inc., as he has since 1990. He has also had stints with Gary Gillette's Baseball Workshop, Total Sports, and Minnesota Public Radio.

Women in Baseball Panel4:45-6:15 p.m., Thursday, June 28Ballroom 1-2

Our panel of authors and experts will discuss the evolution of women in baseball throughout the game's history and their future in the sport. Speakers include:

Laura Day, who has served as Senior Vice President of Business Development for the Minnesota Twins since 2006. She oversees the team's revenue generation, including ticket sales and corporate partnerships, and played a key role in the Twins' transition from the Metrodome to Target Field in 2010. Prior to joining the Twins, she worked at the Minneapolis Convention and Visitor's Association and served as vice president of sales for Victory Sports One. She was one of the first employees of the Minnesota Wild hockey team, helping to launch the Xcel Energy Center as vice president of corporate partnerships from 1999 to 2002. Laura got her start in sports working for the Twins from 1991 to 1999, where he held a variety of posts, including vice president of sales and marketing; director of corporate marketing; and promotions manager.

Leslie Heaphy, a member of SABR since 1989 and chair of SABR's Women in Baseball Committee since 1995. She was elected to the SABR Board of Directors in 2010. Leslie is an associate professor of history at Kent State University at Stark and publishes in the area of the Negro Leagues and women’s baseball. In 2008, she became the founding editor of the journal Black Ball, published by McFarland Publishing. She lives in Kent, Ohio.

Dorothy Seymour Mills, a pioneer among baseball historians. With her late husband, Dr. Harold Seymour, she co-authored the classic three-book series called Baseball, published by Oxford University Press. In 2010, the couple were selected as part of the inaugural class of recipients for SABR's Henry Chadwick Award, which honors the game's greatest researchers, historians, statisticians, analysts and archivists. She also authored A Woman's Work: Writing Baseball History with Harold Seymour (McFarland & Co., 2004), which revealed her contributions to the Baseball series — after not receiving credit for her work for many decades, Dorothy was finally listed as the co-author when OUP re-released the books in 2010. Her most recent books are Chasing Baseball: Our Obsession With Its History, Numbers, People and Places and Drawing Card: A Baseball Novel.

Cecilia Tan, SABR's Publications Editor since 2011. Cecilia has been involved in baseball in one way or another since she fell in love with the 1976 New York Yankees. She writes the oldest baseball blog on the Internet, "Why I Love Baseball", and played second base/right field for the Pawtucket Slaterettes, the oldest continuously operating all-female baseball league in the country. Early in her baseball writing career, she was a web writer for the New York Yankees. She currently serves as Publications Editor for SABR and this past winter was a co-editor of the Baseball Prospectus Annual.

Moderator: Ann Carroll, three-time Emmy Award-winning host/reporter for Fox Sports North. Since 2006, she has been the host/producer and reporter for the "Vikings Weekly" magazine TV show. She has also worked as a sports anchor and sideline reporter at TV stations in Duluth, Minnesota; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Kansas City, Missouri; and St. Louis, Missouri, covering Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, college football and basketball, and other sports. She is a graduate of St. Cloud State University and a native of Edina, Minnesota.

General Managers Panel9:15-10:45 a.m., Friday, June 29Ballroom 3-4

Our featured speaker is Terry Ryan, who became general manager of the Minnesota Twins in 1994, stepping down from the position in 2007, and returning in 2011 as executive vice president/general manager. He was named Executive of the Year by The Sporting News in 2002 and 2006, and Major League Executive of the Year by Baseball America in 2004. Under his leadership, the Twins were named Organization of the Year in 2002 and 2004 by Baseball America and in 2002 by USA Today and Sportsticker. Terry joined the Twins organization in 1974 and pitched in their system for four years.

Moderator: Cory Provus, who became the radio voice of the Minnesota Twins in 2012. He broadcasted Milwaukee Brewers games with Bob Uecker for the previous three years. A native of the Chicago area, Cory graduated from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and did play-by-play and studio hosting for Orange sports. He was named Radio Sportscaster of the Year by the Alabama Broadcasters Association as he called three sports at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. The next year, Cory became the pre- and post-game host for the Chicago Cubs and backed up Pat Hughes with play-by-play duties before moving to the Brewers and now the Twins.

SABR Awards Luncheon12:30-2:30 p.m., Friday, June 29Ballroom 1-2

Keynote speaker: John ThornMaster of Ceremonies: Stew Thornley

John Thorn is the Official Historian of Major League Baseball. He was named to the post by Commissioner Bud Selig in March 2011, succeeding the late Jerome Holtzman. A longtime SABR member who was the recipient of the Society's highest honor, the Bob Davids Award, in 2006, Thorn is the author and editor of numerous books. His works include Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, published in 2011 by Simon & Schuster; Treasures of the Baseball Hall of Fame; the Total Baseball encyclopedia series; The Glory Days: New York Baseball 1947-1957; The Armchair Book of Baseball; and The Hidden Game of Baseball. He is the founding editor of McFarland's Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game and creator of SABR's The National Pastime. He has served as the senior creative consultant for Ken Burns' Baseball series and appears regularly as a television commentator on MLB Network, ESPN, PBS and The History Channel. He is a renowned expert on the early origins of baseball; in 2004, he revealed the existence of a Pittsfield, Massachusetts, statute prohibiting the play of baseball in 1791. He has written essays and articles for many publications, including The Sporting News, the New York Times, the Boston Globe,American Heritage and VOICES, the publication of the New York Folklore Society.

Awards presented or announced at the luncheon include the Lee Allen Award, the Roland Hemond Award, the SABR Baseball Research Awards, the McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Awards, and the Henry Chadwick Awards. The Awards portion of the luncheon concludes with the awarding of the Bob Davids Award, SABR's highest honor.

Players Panel9:30-11:00 a.m., Saturday, June 30Ballroom 1-2

Our traditional Players Panel will include the following speakers who will discuss their careers and lives in baseball:

Ron Coomer, who spent six of his nine seasons with the Minnesota Twins from 1995-2003. Ron grew up on the south side of Chicago, though he was a Cubs fan and often imitated the home-run call of Jack Brickhouse as he fungoed rocks across Central Avenue into Midway Airport. Cooms reached the majors in 1995 with the Twins and also played for the Cubs, Yankees, and Dodgers. He was on the American League All-Star team in 1999. Ron now works on Twins telecasts for Fox Sports North.

Bob “Rocky” Johnson, 11-year veteran infielder with seven MLB teams, 1960-70. Rocky grew up in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina. Rocky once had six straight pinch hits, led his league in pinch hits three times, and finished his career with a pinch-hitting batting average of .272 and an overall batting average of .272. He wonders how rare that is, and he thinks someone from our group will probably be able to tell him.

Roy Smalley III, All-Star shortstop and 13-year veteran from 1975-87. Roy III was the son of Roy Jr., the keynote speaker at SABR 10 in Los Angeles in 1980, and nephew of Gene Mauch. Roy III played on two championship teams at the University of Southern California and signed with the Texas Rangers, having been picked first in the 1974 amateur draft. He came to the Minnesota Twins in 1976 along with Mike Cubbage, Bill Singer, and Jim Gideon in a trade for Bert Blyleven and Danny Thompson. Roy hit 24 home runs in 1979 and was on the All-Star team. He was traded to New York in 1982 and, a little over a month later, came back to the Metrodome and struck out into a triple play against the Twins. Roy came back to the Twins in 1985 and finished his major league career in the World Series in 1987, which the Twins won.

Moderator: Frank Quilici.Frank was a popular member of the Twins for many years and a versatile infielder from 1965 to 1970. In the World Series against the Dodgers in his rookie season, he had two hits in one inning in the opening game. Frank coached the Twins in 1971 and 1972 although he played one game in 1971, an exhibition game against the Giants at Met Stadium in which Giants coach Ozzie Virgil also played. In July 1972 he became the Twins manager, and, in his first game as skipper, Harmon Killebrew hit a two-run homer to beat a team from New York. After managing the Twins through 1975, Frank became a broadcaster, working on the radio with Herb Carneal calling Twins games.

Longtime SABR member Roland Hemond sits down for an exclusive one-on-one session in which he'll talk about his life in baseball and answer questions from the audience. Hemond received the Buck O'Neil Lifetime Achievement Award during 2011 Induction Weekend at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. A three-time winner of MLB's Executive of the Year award, Hemond has been a tireless advocate for SABR over the years and is a familiar face at our national convention. He has also lent his name to an award given annually by SABR's Scouts Research Committee, which recognizes the baseball executive who has demonstrated a lifetime commitment to professional baseball scouts and scouting, and player development history.

This July, Cleveland will host the largest Negro League baseball history conference in America – the Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference. It rotates cities each year (last year it was in Indianapolis), so it’s a big deal that it will be in Cleveland this summer. It will bring a collection of former players, authors, and talks from some of the top Negro League baseball historians in the country. Because it’s in Cleveland, there will be a focus on the local history and players; I’ll be giving a talk on all of the pre-League Park stadiums used by teams in Cleveland. Teams typically rented major league parks for games, but there were a number of other, smaller parks used in Cleveland as well.

To draw attention to the conference, and to the history of Negro League baseball in Cleveland, I plan to have a series of stories from now until the conference in July. Cleveland’s role in Negro League baseball history is fascinating, and many people are unaware of the pre-Cleveland Buckeyes material. A few years ago, I helped the Indians write the text of a Negro League history plaque for Heritage Park; this series will be a longer version of the facts briefly outlined on the plaque.

Register for the Jerry Malloy Negro Leagues Conference, July 19-21, Cleveland, Ohio: Registration is now open for the 15th annual Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference at SABR.org/malloy. The Malloy Conference, hosted by SABR's Negro Leagues Committee, promotes activities to enhance scholarly, educational, and literary objectives. For the past 14 years, the event has been the only symposium dedicated exclusively to the examination and promotion of black baseball history. The conference is open to baseball and history fans of all ages. Each year, monies are targeted to donate books to schools or libraries; raise funds for the Grave Marker Project; and award scholarships to high school seniors in a nationwide essay contest and a nationwide art contest. A complete information packet with schedule, mail-in registration form and program advertising opportunities can be downloaded here (PDF) or on the website.

Seven new biographies have been posted this week as part of the SABR Baseball Biography Project — and we're also putting the finshing touches on our new BioProject book, Red Sox Baseball in the Days of Ike and Elvis: The Red Sox of the 1950s, edited by Mark Armour and Bill Nowlin, with Maurice Bouchard and Len Levin — which brings us to a total of 1,999 published biographies.

The 2,000th biography will be published next week, so look for it at SABR.org/BioProject. Here are the new bios:

We recently relaunched the BioProject at its new home page: SABR.org/BioProject.The new BioProject fully integrates its design with SABR.org and upgrades the back-end platform, making it easier for us to post and edit new bios and eliminating some formatting problems with the original software. All of your old URLs should still work (and if you find one that doesn't, please contact jpomrenke@sabr.org.)

Get involved! If you'd like to help contribute to the SABR BioProject, visit our BioProject Resources page or read the FAQs section to get started. We're also looking to expand the BioProject to include all "encyclopedic" articles on baseball-related subjects from past SABR publications or committee newsletters. If you come across an article you think should be included in the SABR "baseball repository" at the BioProject, send a copy or link to markarmour04@gmail.com or jpomrenke@sabr.org.

If you joined SABR or renewed your membership before March 1, you should have received your copy of the Spring 2012 Baseball Research Journal in the mail. If you haven't received yours yet, give Deb Jayne a call at (602) 343-6450 so we can notify the publisher. You can get started reading the Spring 2012 BRJ (online articles for members only!) at:

That link also offers you a way to download the PDF version of the magazine to read on your computer or e-reader device, as well as a chance to purchase additional copies of the BRJ for any baseball-loving family members or friends at the SABR Bookstore.

In addition to all of the BRJ articles you will find in the print edition, we're also proud to once again present special supplemental material, available exclusively at SABR.org, related to Herm Krabbenhoft's ongoing research of Hank Greenberg's RBI totals.

OPENING FENWAY PARK WITH STYLE: The 1912 World Champion Red Sox is the collaborative work of 27 members of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). This book, which contains over 300 period photographs and illustrations, has as its core the individual biographies of every player on the team, even including Douglass Smith—who appeared in just one game. There are also biographies of owner John I. Taylor and American League founder Ban Johnson. The book also contains a detailed timeline of the full calendar year, with essays on the construction of brand-new Fenway Park and its first renovation, as the team (which won the pennant by 14 games) prepared for Fenway’s first World Series. The 1912 World Series remains one of the most exciting ones in baseball history, extending to eight games because of a 14-inning tie game in Game Two. Game Eight itself saw the Giants score a tie-breaking run to take a lead in the top of the 10th inning, only to see Boston come back with two in the bottom of the 10th and win at home.

Other articles in the book reveal a fascinating spring training, which saw Sox players join the hunt for a murderer in Hot Springs, and look at life in Boston in 1912 — as well as how the newspapers and telegraph reported the games, in the days before radio and television and the internet. It may surprise some to learn of the thousands of people who crowded outside the downtown offices of newspapers so they could get batter-by-batter updates on the progress of the World Series games-in-progress.

There are more than a dozen books celebrating the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park, but not one which is devoted to the 1912 season itself, providing the context for the then-new park which remains home to Boston baseball a century later.

Fred J. Souba, 93, a SABR member since 1983, passed away on June 4, 2012. He was an active member of the Halsey Hall Chapter, frequently attending the chapter's bi-monthly breakfasts, and the Twin Cities Sports Collectors Club. He served his country during World War II in the European theater and was employed by Piper-Jaffery as a stockbroker. He played softball into his sixties, and enjoyed bowling and playing bocce ball with the Born Again Jocks. Fred was a big fan of Enos Slaughter. When he retired his company decided, instead of a gold watch, to get him Enos Slaughter. The company brought in Enos for Fred's retirement party. He once appeared on the cover of "Sports Collectors Digest", holding a 1933 Napoleon Lajoie card. (You can see the cover here.) Fred was preceded in death by his wife of 47 years, Muriel M. Souba. He is survived by three children, seven grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren and longtime friend and companion Bette Kent. A funeral service was held Thursday, June 7 at First Memorial Funeral Chapel, 7110 France Ave. S., Edina, MN 55435. Interment at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, memorials should be sent directly to Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation, 1427 Clarkview Rd. Suite 100, Baltimore, MD 21209, in memory of Fred Souba.